With the holiday season upon us (and retailers lathered up for it), I want to remind us all (as I remind myself): a good holiday doesn’t have to be a goods holiday. And this year, in spite of the massive sales machine that grinds 24/7 from now until Christmas, it’s a little easier to live that distinction. The lingering recession is tempering many people’s former extravagance, generating a healthy move toward moderation.
The Spending Frenzy’s Over
During the second quarter, average credit card debt slipped below $5,000 for the first time in eight years—its fifth consecutive quarter of decline. The percentage of cardholders ninety or more days delinquent dropped to less than 1 percent, down by more than 21 percent from last year (Newsroom.transunion.com). Americans are rebalancing savings and debt—changing both their thinking and their buying habits. Maybe what we’re seeing is the just-perceptible first wave of a genuine sea change. Maybe artist Barbara Kruger’s message, boldly spelled out on the ceiling of an upscale gallery in New York’s tony East Hampton recently: “You want it/You need it/You buy it/You forget it” is finally being taken to heart. I hope so. We’d be a lot happier, both as individuals and as a culture, if the economic pressure on our shopping habits helped us reshape the phenomenon from what it has been to what it could be.
What it has been is a self-defeating treadmill, an endless exercise in futility—because we’ve been manipulated into expecting that what we buy can fill our innermost voids, regulate our emotions, repair our moods, or provide us with a “perfect” image. A Cathy cartoon puts it in a nutshell: “I wasn’t going to spend any money,” she begins, “but I just have to buy one new thing. If I buy one new thing, I’ll feel new. If I feel new, I’ll act new. If I act new, I’ll lose weight, excel in my job, organize my home, catch up on my correspondence, and have hordes of handsome men showering me with Casablanca lilies.” “Quite a lot to ask of a headband,” cautions the saleslady. “But well worth the $7.95 try,” responds Cathy.
That same mentality shaped this ad for retail therapy: “Come to Barney’s Psychotherapy Sale! Fill your emotional baggage with mood-enhancing bargains. Get in touch with your inner shopper.” Tongue-in-cheek, to be sure, but representative of the impossible promises that help drive our consumer economy. Transformative magic, equal-opportunity, all-purpose mood changer, generalized panacea, shopping has been touted as the answer to so many questions that it was even invoked by then-President Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 as the ultimate form of public service. We could do our part to help heal the country, he assured us, by simply going shopping. Fast-forward nine years. Now, in no small part because of the utter recklessness of our shopping at all levels of society—in the housing market, on Wall Street, inside individual households, and by the government—America is still mired in its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
